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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Poll: 50% of Americans don’t know who John Boehner is

The headline on this WSJ/NBC News Poll story is that Bill Clinton enjoys the highest rating for political figures. But the most interesting result is that half of Americans don’t know House Minority Leader John Boehner.

While at the same time, current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi garners a 50% negative rating (14% somewhat negative, 36% very negative).

This poll comes after weeks of near continuous attacks on Boehner by the White House, Democrat Party and its public relations department. Despite all of the coordinated efforts—which have stooped so low as to suggest marital infidelity—Boehner remains nearly unscathed. If anything, the relentless assault has improved Boehner’s reach. Absolutely no one knew who he was this time last year. Now, about half the people do know who he is and despite the White House assault, neither his positives nor his negatives have barely budged. This shows that the public is not interested in the White House’s attempts to get the spotlight off its dismal record. By trying to cast a presumptive speaker Boehner as the same old, same old Republican, they’ve attempted to make Americans forget that the last two years even happened. It hasn’t worked.

Indeed, it has probably backfired, and badly so. The last thing in the world the Democrats would want to do is to nationalize this election. But by going after Boehner so loudly and so publicly, that’s just what they’ve done. It’s reminded Americans that the Democrats have been in power since 2006 and that Boehner has had little to do with the mess the country is in.

Polls like this should make Republicans even more confident going into the November elections.